


all my faces are alibis (trying to stop the bleeding)

by Lire_Casander



Series: in this broken beautiful mess [7]
Category: 9-1-1: Lone Star (TV 2020)
Genre: Angst, Blood, Episode: s01e03 Texas Proud, Fist Fights, M/M, Mentions of overdosing, Minor Injuries, Suicidal Thoughts, Violence, bar brawl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:35:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27302023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lire_Casander/pseuds/Lire_Casander
Summary: he just needs to feel something,anything, but instead of turning to the poison he just runs headfirst into hell[coda for S01E03 Texas Proud]
Series: in this broken beautiful mess [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1989202
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	all my faces are alibis (trying to stop the bleeding)

**Author's Note:**

> beta’ed by [meloingly](https://archiveofourown.org/users/meloingly/pseuds). any remaining mistakes are my own
> 
> title from _alibis_ by marianas trench
> 
> written for [tk strand week 2020](https://tkstrandweek.tumblr.com/post/623797377206255616/welcome-to-tk-strand-week-2020-please-join-us-in), **_day 7: wild card!_**
> 
> written for **_outnumbered in a fight_** from my [bad things happen bingo card](https://lire-casander.tumblr.com/post/626174763915722752/welcome-to-my-very-own-bad-things-happen-bingo)

TK stomps away from his coworkers, swearing under his breath as he can hear Paul trying to calm Judd down, and Mateo and Marjan babbling about one thing or the other while they try to cover up for them in the wake of their fight when his father shows up after having faced the media due to Marjan’s unexpected — and troublesome — exit from the silo.

He doesn’t know how the rest of his team can’t understand why he’s done what he’s done. Why he’s thrown himself after her. Why he’d do it all again, for _any_ of them. Even for Cowboy Judd Ryder, the epitome of good behavior.

TK holes himself up for the rest of their shift, which isn’t long after his stint with Judd, hiding away from everyone as he allows his own regrets to eat at him from the inside. There’s something in the way Judd has talked to him that keeps nagging at TK’s psyche, and that — paired up with the guilt he’s been feeling ever since he’s stepped all over Carlos’ heart by walking out the other night — is enough to create a gaping wound in his soul that he doesn’t even try to heal.

Juddʼs words echo in his mind as he undresses in the locker room after his shift is over, getting ready for a shower before heading home. Heʼs purposefully waited until the others had already left because he wanted to be alone. His father has thrown him a weird look, but otherwise, he’s walked out of the station without exchanging a single word with TK. 

He should be used to the silence by now, to the intricacies of his own brain unfolding worst-case scenarios all day long — what if he hadn’t proposed to Alex, what if he hadn’t taken those pills, what if his father hadn't found him, what if, what if, what if. He groans as he shucks his AFD t-shirt into the bag he’s taking home for laundry. 

But not even the spray of the shower can drown the echoes of the truths Judd has displayed in front of him. 

_Nobody in New York had the balls to tell the Coachʼs kid that his crap stinks._

TK sinks into the tiles beneath the water, allowing the droplets to roll down his back as he leans into the wall, one hand balled up in a fist that's hovering over the surface, threat to break loose at the drop of a hat — or at any tiny detail that could set TK off. 

He knows he's a powder keg, a fuse ready to combust at any given time. TK is aware of how lost heʼs become in the past couple of years — not just the little over a hundred days that heʼs been sober, but most probably since he started his relationship with Alex. 

Alex. 

Maybe Judd is right, but if the sturdy cowboy has hit the truth, then it means that Alex had been right as well all along. TK doesn’t think his soul can survive actually acknowledging that his bastard of a cheating ex-boyfriend could have been hitting the right nerves during their twenty-one-months long relationship. 

Because that's what heʼs ever been to Alex — he had said that Mitchell was his future, the other half of his heart. TK had felt himself dying inside that fancy restaurant by the lake in Central Park. 

He feels himself wilting away, washed off along with the water that's swirling down the drain. 

TK knows what he needs, but he also knows that he canʼt risk it again. He almost died — has almost died from overdosing twice in his life — and heʼs been sober ever since that night. But he still craves the high of the drugs, the feeling of invincibility that he associates with the oxy, the numbness of not caring about anything anymore. 

He shakes his head as he steps out of the shower and wraps his lower middle in a soft towel. The team from the following shift is already milling around the space, so TK makes quick work of drying his body before throwing on a white t-shirt with some graphics on it and a pair of faded jeans. He greets the incoming Lieutenant and grabs his bag on the way out, clearing the place for his coworkers. 

TK still doesn’t know his way about Austin, he still needs a driver and he still has a curfew, so it doesn’t really matter whether he has or hasnʼt a slum of reference. When he steps outside of the fire station, he notices that the day is winding down but he doesn’t want to go home. His father keeps him on a tight leash but tonight TK isn’t feeling like sitting beside his father while watching a TV show he is not interested in, purposefully ignoring the elephant in the room. 

He picks up his cell and clicks a few times until the device is making a call. His father picks up at the second ring, sounding breathless. 

“TK,” he greets. “Something wrong?” 

“I—I didn't want to interrupt,” TK stammers clumsily, thinking that he might have caught his father in a compromising position. “Hadn't realized you were—Uh, anyway. I think I'll walk back home. I'll follow my phoneʼs directions but I think it'll take me some time, so don't wait up for me.” 

“I don’t think, after the day youʼve had, that _that_ is advisable.” 

“Just trust me already!” TK snaps. “I’m not going to overdose again!” 

He knows he's gone one step too far when he listens to his father's sharp gasp. “Sorry, I didn’t—” 

“You sure did, Tyler,” his father scolds him. “I told you it would be tough love from that moment on.” 

“And I think I have proved I can be trusted. It was just a mistake that won't happen again.” 

His father hesitates, ever so slightly, before sighing. “Come home to sleep,” he finally relents. “And don’t do anything stupid like going to that trap bar Judd warned us against.” 

He makes a quick promise of coming home to sleep, hoping that his father doesn’t pick up on the fact that heʼs not mentioning anything regarding any bar.

TK is googling for that bar as soon as he hangs up.

He finds out that there’s actually a bar named _The Trap_ ; it's everything Cowboy Judd has warned them about — a filthy hole with an online reputation of brawls and drunks. Apparently it has the highest count of police calls a night according to several webpages. But it has one disadvantage — he canʼt reach it by feet. TK doesn’t even register what heʼs doing before heʼs opening his Uber app and punching the address into it with a vicious smirk painted on his face.

He wonʼt be using tonight, nor will he be drinking, but he can fight his demons in another, more physical way. Quite literally. 

He hops into the black car that pulls up next to the station and leans back into the leather seat while the driver dices into Austin night traffic expertly. The landscape changes almost imperceptibly — the houses become more and more scarce, the decrepitude creeping in as they roll through poorly preserved neighborhoods until the car reaches a wasteland where a neon sign announces the bar. The music is so loud that TK can hear it through the rolled-up windows. 

“You sure you’re in the right place, man?” the driver asks, fidgeting behind the wheel. 

TK sighs contentedly as he scans the crowd flittering around the place — drunk men leaning into the walls, women in skimpy dresses, painted graffiti on the walls and suspicious stains everywhere. “Yeah,” he replies while he unbuckles his safety belt. “I’m sure.”

As he saunters close to the entrance, TK can recognize Doug Burr’s _White Nights, Black Lights_ , one of the local favorites when it comes to folk. He shakes his head, Juddʼs voice creeping up once again until it's taken control of his mind, reminding him that he is nothing more than his fatherʼs son — someone who hasnʼt earned his place in the team. Someone who's there because of his last name and not because of who _he_ is. Walking past that door, the stink hitting up his nostrils and taking his senses hostage, TKʼs heart sinks. 

There’s a bit of color around the edge of his vision, but his soul isn’t in it and he is just numb. He canʼt even remember why he is here in the first place or what he wanted to take out of this excursion against his father's wishes. 

Maybe he just wants to feel something. Maybe he just wants to fill the gaping hole in his soul that has been eating up at him ever since Alex confessed. Maybe he just wants to forget that heʼs already felt something — _too much_ —because it's too soon. It’s crazy. 

He scans the room and targets two townies by the bar, already past tipsy if the way they're holding themselves is any indication. One is completely bald, and while the other has a healthy mop of hair, there’s something unpleasant about his stance. TK makes a beeline to stand between them as they slur to one another. 

“Hey, blondie,” the bald one calls for the bartender, who's too busy to turn around. “Couple of boilmakers,” he keeps on, whistling to no avail. “How’d she not see us, man? Bitch must be blind,” he tells his partner in crime in a stage whisper that TK can hear from across the bar. 

“I don’t know,” the other man says, too focused on his drink to actually pay attention. 

TK approaches the bar and comes between them. He smiles up at the bartender, a blonde young woman with a stressed gleam in her eyes. He just knows what he wants to do and how he wants to do it. He needs to blow off some steam and since the option of calling a certain police officer is out of order unless he wants to be arrested, TK needs to get his kick from somewhere. 

The bald man provides as he calls TK out for stepping onto his toes. “Whoa, where do you think you’re going, princess?”

“Just ordering a drink,” he justifies himself, leaning into the bar and talking to the bartender. “Excuse me,” he says when she looks at him. She’s beautiful; TK is beginning to hate that he’s out to ruin her whole night with his actions, but when heʼs craving his high he can be relentless. “Mineral water, when you get the chance,” he asks politely, winking at her for good measure. Only he knows that he’s not really interested in anything that isn’t creating havoc — he’s tried to put up the façade of a guy flirting with the attractive bartender just to see if he can get a rise out of the townies who are attempting to harass her without much success.

The bartender smiles back at him and replies with a sweet Southern drawl. “Sure thing, doll.” 

TK thinks that, were things hugely different, he would have felt attracted to her. In an alternate world where heʼd be attracted to women and Carlos Reyes didn’t exist. 

Carlos Reyes _again_. 

There’s a spark of color simmering in the back of his mind at the thought, but he pushes it down in favor of another way to reach the colors once again. 

“It’s not that she didn’t see you,” he says as he points between the two men, although heʼs signaling mostly at his left. “It’s that she didn’t like what she saw,” he finished, clicking his tongue and waiting for his words to sink in. 

Theyʼre two against one, and there’s nothing TK loves more than to be outnumbered in a fight — maybe tonight he will manage to feel something other than indifference. 

The first punch doesn’t come as a surprise, but the pain ricocheting across his body does. He tries to throw a few hits of his own, but soon he realizes that the two men he’s targeted are way bigger, way stronger, way angrier and way drunker than he’d expected — as if he’d actually thought about this _at all_ — and soon enough he’s underneath a pile of human flesh beating him up.

He hasn’t felt this alive in a long while. He conveniently ignores the fact that there are no colors making their appearance through the cracks of the fists colliding against his cheekbones. He conveniently ignores the fact that he’s felt perfectly alive, to the point of being terrified of it, every single time he’s been with Carlos.

More people join the brawl, and the hits are coming from everywhere so fast that TK loses track of time and space as he dodges fists and feet and a bottle at some point — broken and sharp and aimed at his head with so much force that it’s nearly impossible to duck.

He avoids it in time, but he loses his footing in the movement and the narrow advantage he had gets thrown out the proverbial window when he turns around and meets another townie who wants to push him around.

He’s thrown down to the floor by a well-placed punch coming from his left, and he falls down to the filthy floor, stained with something sticky TK doesn’t want to acknowledge. He’s too busy trying to get up, but a boot finds its way against his throat and another one kicks his stomach. 

TK manages to sneak from underneath the gang beating him to a pulp long enough to get up and sway on his feet. Out of the corner of the only eye that’s working properly on his face — his left eye completely blacked out and, for the feeling of it, swollen — he can see the bartender talking hysterically on the phone, and understands that the police must be on their way.

He lifts his hands in front of his face, but it’s too late when he gets all defensive. His movements are slurred and slowed down by the abundant blood flowing from his nose and his mouth. His vision is blurred and he suspects he might have a concussion from the moment his head hit the ground mere minutes before.

“Austin Police!” he hears over the howls and cheers of the crowd that has been catcalling and whistling. “Everyone step down and stop fighting!”

The bald man throws one last punch that hits TK square in his nose. He cries out in pain, and lifts one hand to assess the damage. He’s trying to feel whether or not the bone is broken when a pair of hands grab him forcefully and a voice he doesn’t recognize says, “Austin Police! You’re under arrest for disorderly conduct!”

“We were just having a friendly conversation,” says the bald man who’s started everything with TK. “It just escalated a bit.”

“A friendly conversation?” the officer scoffs. TK thinks he’s seen this particular officer before. Maybe he’s Carlos’ partner, but in that case Carlos would have been around.

Maybe TK is lucky enough not to run into Carlos Reyes tonight after this horrible bar brawl.

“Yeah,” the bald man insists.

TK snorts, recalling Paul’s words from earlier when he separated Judd and TK back at the station. “Yeah,” he pipes in, hissing through his teeth when the officer pulls him up and his side hurts. “A friendly conversation with a bunch of exclamation points.”

That earns him a glare from the police officer, who tugs at him to exit the slum and get into the cruiser way harsher than expected. TK yelps when his back collides against the leather of the seat, but other than that he doesn’t say anything else. He knows he’ll be made to prove that he’s not intoxicated — which he isn’t — and he’ll be sent to talk to another officer once they arrive at the precinct.

He hopes against all hope that said officer isn’t Carlos Reyes.

There are several things that TK regrets in his life, and while starting a relationship with Alex holds the first place in his personal ranking, walking out on Carlos that night a few days ago is quickly getting close to outrank it. 

TK hates secrets. He’s never liked keeping things from his trusted ones — even when he was using and he knew he had to lie to his parents in order to secure his fix, he had despised every single moment of it. That had fallen on top of his crumbling self-esteem, and it would have killed him if that first overdose hadn't been faster. He knows having a secret like this in a line of job like his can be deadly. 

It eats at him from the inside that he canʼt tell his new team about his cravings and the constant need to get high that heʼs fighting every day. With the clarity that's now befallen upon him after having had his guts turned to mush, TK understands that Judd wasn't only criticizing him for disobeying a direct order — TK has always been reckless, thoughtless, brave and relentless, and even after so little time together the team knee him well enough. Judd wasn't angry because TK had gone rogue. 

Judd had been terrified that he was going to lose yet another member of his fire family, and he had snapped. 

TK groans as heʼs forced out of the cruiser and into the station, realization dawning on him, crushing him as it would do to a paper house. 

Judd had been triggered just the same way TK had been triggered back at Carlosʼ with the champagne and the dinner and the mention of marriage proposals. 

TK goes through the motions of being tested for drugs and alcohol, wincing every time he has to speak because his lower lip is definitely busted. He hears the officers muttering under their breaths that he hasnʼt even drunk a drop of alcohol so they should release him, and he hopes so. 

When he looks down at the state of his t-shirt, he cringes. There’s blood on the collar, and heʼs sure he has a few cuts on his cheeks if the stinging feeling is anything to go by. His father is going to kill him. 

“Cʼmon, Strand,” says an officer, picking him up out of the cell where they have thrown him, away from the others for fear they would try to reenact their previous antics. “You’re being processed out and released.” 

He’s taken to yet another desk, given a pack of ice and left to rot until the last officer arrives to give him his belongings — his phone, his wallet and part of his dignity — and it's then that he realizes heʼs been trembling all along in fear. But as he reflects on his own feelings, sitting in an uncomfortable chair waiting for some random officer to show up and give him the slip, TK Strand has to admit that he isn’t scared of his father’s wrath or even the upcoming curfew he’s going to undergo once his father learns of this stunt he’s pulled.

He’s not scared of that.

He’s scared of the colors that are peeking out around the corners of his existence, because they mean he’s healing somehow, and this is not the process he’d have expected to go through after willingly surrendering himself to darkness barely fifteen weeks before. He’s scared of what those colors mean.

He’s scared of _feeling_ — of course he’s scared. He has only seen gray for so long, even when he was with Alex; everything around him had always been lacking color in a numbing way. TK hadn’t realized that he craved colors, and everything associated with them, until he met Carlos Reyes. Until he saw himself reflected in those brown eyes. Until he felt that gravitational pull toward those strong arms.

Until he was sitting at a table, while Carlos offered him the dinner he’d cooked, and instead of wanting to run all TK had felt was _love_. 

Of course he’s scared. He’s fucking terrified, because it shouldn’t have gone down that way — he shouldn’t have felt so complete in Carlos’ presence so soon. He shouldn’t have seen colors explode around the seamless corners of his very existence whenever Carlos is around. TK shouldn’t, but he does. 

Those colors are more addictive than any drug he’s ever taken — and he’s quite the expert on getting high.

He sits at that desk at the precinct, waiting for whoever’s in charge of his arrest to show up, applying as much cold as he can to his left eye, when he hears the reverberating steps of someone getting closer. He thinks that maybe he should sit up straight, but he decides to add that thought to the ever-growing pile of things he ignores, and instead he sinks further into the uncomfortable chair.

And then there’s a cough — someone clearing their throat — and TK would have recognized that sound _anywhere_. Once again, he chooses to ignore the nagging voice at the back of his head that keeps telling him that it’s too soon, that he doesn’t deserve this. TK sighs, lifts his gaze from the floor and brace himself for the conversation that will undoubtedly ensue.

As much as he tried, he could have never been ready for the new whirlwind of color swirling around him when he meets Carlos Reyes for the first time after their disaster of a first date.

**Author's Note:**

> fun facts about writing this fic!
> 
> * the fancy restaurant by the lake in central park is [the loeb boathouse](https://www.thecentralparkboathouse.com/), which is currently closed due to covid, but looks like an amazing place to have a proposal dinner. i know it doesn’t even look remotely close to what’s shown in the show, but i loved this place ever since i heard of it, and i want to try it the day i finally finally go to nyc.


End file.
